Standing one's ground is one of the cardinal "traits", if you will of "being a man". People forget this at their peril. In the "class" I am attending now there is a lot of talk about how adhering to one's virtues and strengths brings true happiness and a sense of purpose and identity. In the light of this I find the current uproar over Obama's actions releasing the CIA memo, as highly disturbing. What I find most troubling is the President's defenciveness over the whole matter, as if he had done something wrong. His Press Secretary today was waffeling all over the place. I used the metaphore of "sand" rather than mud because a year ago when Libby and Karl Rove were being investigated by prosecuter Fitzgerald, the metaphore of "throwing sand in the umpire's face" was used to justify why Liddy and Rove would be guilty of certain acts of obstruction of justice. You don't have to watch the show "Cops" very long before you realize if you interfer with a policeman's work, you will be arrested as an obstructionist. President Obama "opened the door today" of possible prosecutions of higher ups in this whole condoning and legitimazation of torture by officials of the Bush adminestration. But like Bill Clinton in the Waco case, Obama says "The buck stops with my attorney general. He's in charge". The President wont even "man up" and "own" his own actions. No wonder the conservatives are sniping at him from so many corners. Abraham Lincoln was not hesitant about declaring that our country was in a Civil War. He could have waffled and mumbled something about "historic president" as he polished up President Buchannon's bronze statue. He might have apologized for even "entertaining thoughts" of a Civil War. We must prosecute all those involved in putting a legal veneer on torture policies of the CIA and others. Some have said "If they know we won't torture then then they won't be afraid of us". But history has shown that we do not get reliable information for tortured subjects, but they'll say anything just to make us happy. But another thing that history shows is that we've been down this road before. This is not "uncharted territory" as Nancy Skinner would have you believe. But rather a precedent was set when Jerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton continued this precedent when he decided to drop all further investigation of Iran-Contra, which has been simmering for years. What we as Americans will be judged by on the Last Day is not whether we were able to win an off year election but rather whether we stood our moral ground and had America live up to it's moral asperations. In refusing to torture we define who we are, just as George Washington in the Revolution defined who America was by treating prisoners of war kindly. We should not permit behavior in ourselves that we would scream bloody murder were it done to us by a foreign power. Nancy Skinner said some positively assanine things today. One of the things she did was read a letter that was well constructed and made perfect sense- - but goes on to say it was a stupid letter anyhow- - - basically because she says so. She kept throwing mud and she kept losing her ground. Then there is the argument how we as a nation "Can't walk and chew gum at the same time" or some derivitive of that. To which I'll say were I President, the Constitution would be my first priority. Being faithful to that. If we didn't accomplish anything else in my adminestration at least we would do that. But Nancy's second big lapse in logic is this belief that somehow if we abondon our primcples as a nation that magically all of these other things she talks about like hydrogen cars or health care or student loans or what have you- - will now suddenly fall into place. The economy will somehow recover now because we made this decision to abandon our principles. Just as Rush Limbaugh tells his side not to compromize because it only shows weakness, I tell us liberals on our side not to compromize, because it's weakness.
Guns are a pressing issue these days what with Comumbine in the news again. There is a panic about not being able to buy ammunition in Michigan or any other state. And people who hang out in gun shops blame Obama for the shortage and tell roomers of all sorts of horrible bills that are in the works. People want there to be some psychological profile of people why buy guns to make sure they're not deranged. Personally I'm not even sure I'd qualify to buy a gun with my past encounters with "the system". People want to put cereal numbers on bullets so they can be traced in case of comission of a crime. And people want guns registered, the same say you register your automobile. I don't see anything unreasonable about any of these rules. As to the area of banning assault rifels, in my mind this is an area where we can compromize. You give me all that other stuff- - and I will let you have your assault rifels.
People are all upset about their IRA's and 401K's being only half their previous value. My advice to them if hold on and in another year or so they should be back to their previous value, and then you can retire. But as someone who has dabbled in the investment field I can tell you that as a rule - Mutual Funds suck. They always have. Gordon Gecko is but one of many voice who states flatly that mutual funds don't even keep up with the major averages but in my experiance with people I know, always do worse. And were I all these investors on Sixty Minutes I would read contracts I sign. The only time I don't read contracts now is downloading software because there I've seen so many disclaimers and they all start to look alike, and I understand that I'm gambling and one of these days I just might lose. But in the case of investment contracts you aren't dealing with a minor probability but a virtual certainty of getting ripped off. But still this is not the time to fall apart. You know what they say about keeping your head when all those about you are losing theirs. This bear market won't last forever. Personally I'd recoment an astrological reading for best timing of buys and sells, but that's your decision to make.
I was going to talk about Earth Day and the period around it, in my life in 1970 and in 1971 because both of these years were turning points in their own way. But I just don't have time for it in this blog, and in case you haven't noticed, it's really been hot around here the past four days. There is a new Walt Disney movie ealled "Earth" out this Wednesday April 22nd. A nice under-water shot would be refreshing right about now. In 1989 they announced something called "Cold Fusion". Now regular or "Hot" fusion, you all know about. That's the hydrogen bomb. Fusion doesn't have the radioactive waste and decay that fizzion reactors have. If they could somehow put fusion in a bottle, whoever did it would be rich. We know about E = MC squared and all that. Some glorious day in the future in the Star Trek era, energy will cease to be any obsticle to mankind. But this is not that day. Cold fusion hit the newspaper headlines in 1989 but it proved to be more of a pipe drean than anything else, and has all the trappings or some sort of con artist's trick. You take sea water with duterium or heavy water in it, and mix it with paladium, which is related to platinum, and you run an electric current through the whole thing and there is heat generated that is somehow not accounted for in ordenary physics. But they have proved unable to replicate this experiment with any consistency, or even at all. Right now ninety percent of scientists do not believe in Cold Fusion. It certainly doesn't live up to the claims made for it, and the ammound of energy produced appears to be infinetessible. Personally I don't even know how they expect to produce hydrogen for the hydrogen car. That to me looks like another pipe dream that won't pan out. But history has shown that we Americans will eventually solve all these energy puzzles that perplex us now.
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